German man programs "Hello World" into wheat field

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2007/06/german-programmer-programs-hello-world-into-wheat-field.ars

by billpg • 17 years ago

37 12 17 years ago

idm3• 17 years ago

This is really neat looking, but ... how exactly do you execute the code? It appears that the release from semacode.com targets cellphones exclusively, so I can't get it to run on the command line.

  wget http://semacode.com/download/semacode_reader_me-1.6.zip
  unzip semacode_reader_me-1.6.zip
  cd semacode_reader_me-1.6
  java -jar semacode_reader_me-1.6.jar

  Failed to load Main-Class manifest attribute from
  semacode_reader_me.jar

A tip here didn't solve the problem either: http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=951...

  java -Djava.awt.headless=true -jar semacode_reader_me.jar -f cropfield.jpg

Anyone out there having more luck with this one?

EDIT: Okay... I tried compiling from source, and the problem is that you need the J2ME SDK for the MIDlet libraries.

teilo• 17 years ago

First, it's not code. It's just a datamatrix that reads "Hello, world!"

Second, you would need to do some heavy filtering and distortion to process the image into a square, readable form. Here's a 1-bit PNG processed from an image taken from the programmer's flickr site. It scanned on my G1 just fine: http://bit.ly/4lxG4U

idm3• 17 years ago

Cool PNG!

As an update, I'm still trying to get the semacode software to work in OS X, and it's just not cooperating. Sun recently pre-released a J2ME environment for OSX, which is frustratingly buggy...

Here's a link to the SDK:

http://java.sun.com/javame/downloads/sdk30_mac.jsp

...and here's a link to a thread about the (apparently common) issue I'm having:

http://forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5412666

Glad to hear semacode JAR works on cellphones. If you get it working in an emulator, please let us know about it!

EDIT: meh, forget it... the Sun SDK just isn't ready for primetime. Instead, I recommend libdmtx:

http://www.libdmtx.org

It's available from macports, there's wrappers for tons of languages (e.g. python), and although it doesn't magically work with your PNG, I think it only requires a little tweaking...

EDIT 2:

Forget the version from macports... just compile from source, and your PNG works fine using version 0.7.2

astine• 17 years ago

Reading stuff like this makes me wish I had a wheat field too.

Anon84• 17 years ago

"If you write it they will run it?"

jamesbressi• 17 years ago

Let's be honest: He is communicating with aliens.

Those little light beams that supposedly come out from the bottom of the saucer are really infrared-like beams to read semacode.

+1 to you Mr. German man.

dstorrs• 17 years ago

Here's a niche marketing idea for you: executable hedge mazes that print out paeans of praise to the owner of the maze.

scorxn• 17 years ago

That's not really programming, now is it? I was hoping for some genetic or soil modification that outputs "Hello world" in size or color variation of the grown wheat.

yason2• 17 years ago

How about farmer's Game of Life on those blocks, with new iterations growing up each year. :)

yason2• 17 years ago

Now this is where I can now point to the next time someone asks he'd like to know more about the programming field.

citizenparker• 17 years ago

The title is incorrect. It should read: "German man mow-grams 'Hello World' into wheat field"

idm3• 17 years ago

If you want to actually decode the crop formation, here's how to do it. First, grab tello's PNG, which is a transformed and color-adjusted version of the crop formation:

https://files-diers.us.s3.amazonaws.com/cornfield.png

Next, download and compile the latest release of libdmtx, which is a datamatrix I/O library:

http://www.libdmtx.org/

https://sourceforge.net/projects/libdmtx/files/libdmtx/0.7.2...

Finally, use dmtxread from libdmtx:

  dmtxread -n cornfield.png

The extended explanation is in these comments:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=924377

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=924495

German man programs "Hello World" into wheat field

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